Rozner: 20 years ago, Tiger Woods obliterated U.S. Open field

Before he arrived at Pebble Beach for the 2000 U.S. Open, Tiger Woods was already having a pretty decent year.

For anyone else, that few months would have been a great career.

Woods had 4 wins, 3 seconds, a fourth and a fifth in 10 starts - having won 11 of his last 20 PGA Tour events - but the 100th U.S. Open was not a tournament that even Woods could run away with.

At least, that was thinking of the average human going into the week.

On the day before the Open, Mark O'Meara played a practice round with Woods, and when NBC's Johnny Miller asked him how Woods was hitting it, O'Meara replied, "Johnny, this kid right here is the greatest player who's ever played the game."

O'Meara's mic drop would prove prophetic.

In the final U.S. Open for Jack Nicklaus, Woods immediately stole the show and on Thursday's broadcast, to the shock of partner Dan Hicks, Miller offered the followed amid Woods' opening round 65: "I got this hunch that Tiger's going to break every U.S. Open record this week and win by a big margin."

On Thursday? Seriously? He only had a 1-shot lead at that moment, but in Miller's mind that's how much better Woods was than everyone who was attempting to compete with him.

His first bogey of the week came on the fifth hole of the second round and on the sixth Woods pushed his drive right and into the deep rough. That's when he hit the signature shot of the tournament.

With a 7-iron from 200 yards, blind to the hole and below a steep hill, Woods gashed it out, flew it over the cliff and rolled it up onto the green, prompting Roger Maltbie to say on the air, "It's just not a fair fight."

So true.

But there was drama - and almost no one knew about it. That took place on Saturday morning as Woods was finishing a second round delayed by fog Friday. Woods had six holes to play and had built himself a big lead.

"Typically, at the start of each day you make sure you have enough gloves in the bag, enough balls in bag, whatever you might need for the day," caddie Steve Williams explained in a Golf Channel film, "The Tiger Slam." "But when it's just a resumption of play, you don't need to put anything further in the golf bag.

"So when we got out to the 13th hole (to start the day) and I put my hand in the golf bag, there was only three balls in the bag. I thought, 'That's a bit strange.'

"What happened was, because we didn't go to the practice green and putt, Tiger in the morning putted in his (hotel) room and left the three balls that should have been in the bag, in his room.

"The very first hole he plays, as we're walking off the green, he chucked a ball to a young boy walking with his dad. I just couldn't bring myself to ask this kid, 'Can I get the ball back?'

"We play 14, 15, 16, 17 and I got two balls left and we get on the 18th tee ... "

That's where Woods pulled out his driver and blasted it out of bounds, onto the rocks, left of the fairway.

"I can honestly say in 40 years of caddying I've never been that nervous. I was shaking," Williams said. "I was like, 'Hey Tiger, you're leading the U.S. Open by this many shots. It's the last hole. Perhaps just hit an iron down there?'

"He was having none of that."

Woods went right back to the driver.

"Fortunately, he gets that one down the fairway and that's a huge relief because that's our last golf ball," Williams said. "If he had hit one more shot into the ocean, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you because I would have got fired right there and then."

Woods led by 6 after two rounds and his 10-shot lead heading to Sunday was the largest ever in the National Championship. His goal in the final round was to avoid bogey, and par putts down the stretch - especially at 16 - brought the big fist pumps. He never did make a bogey that day.

Said Rocco Mediate of Woods, "I'm definitely mortal. I think we all are. But he's not."

Twenty years ago Thursday, Woods finished off the greatest performance in major championship history. Period. Never mind topping it. No one will ever come close. It's that ridiculous.

He won by 15, the largest winning margin in a U.S. Open, breaking a record 101 years old, and the largest winning margin in a major championship, breaking a record 138 years old.

At 12-under, it was the lowest winning score in relation to par in a U.S. Open, a notoriously difficult tournament, breaking the record by 4 strokes.

The following month, he won the British Open at St. Andrews by 8 shots, the youngest player (24) ever to win the career grand slam, and the month after that he played the first two rounds with Nicklaus in his final PGA Championship, before Woods took down Bob May in an epic playoff.

Said Nicklaus of Woods, "He's playing a game I'm not familiar with."

Last year when Brooks Koepka was struggling in regular events after a second at the Masters, a win at the PGA Championship and a second at the U.S. Open, he said, "I'm just fried. Everything's aching. Feel like an old man. It's hard to focus. I don't think I'm even over the PGA and then to exert all that energy (at the U.S. Open), I've caught myself yawning on the course.

"When you play well at majors, it drains you emotionally."

The week after Woods won the PGA Championship in 2000 - his third straight major victory - he went to a WGC event at Firestone and won by - wait for it - 11 strokes. Yes, 11 strokes.

For the 2000 season, it was 9 wins in 20 starts with 17 top 10s and 4 seconds.

The following April he won the Masters to complete the Tiger Slam and finished undeniably the best 10 months of golf in the history of the game, with 12 wins in 28 starts and all four major championships.

But it began with that absurd performance at Pebble Beach 20 years ago this week, and not one of those records will ever be touched.

As much as we might say that records are made to broken, some are quite clearly records that will stand forever.